In 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) published what the organization called their “working definition” of antisemitism.
According to its lead writer, “It was created primarily so that European data collectors (of antisemitic incidents) could know what to include and exclude. That way antisemitism could be monitored better over time and across borders.”
She added, “It was never intended to be a campus hate speech code, but that’s what Donald Trump’s executive order accomplished this week.”
These words were written by the American Jewish Committee’s antisemitism expert Kate Aronoff, in 2019. She, as the author, was condemning the application of the definition by the Trump administration, which signed an executive order in December of that year that made Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act apply to antisemitic acts defined under the IHRA.
Many worried that this order, which was signed nearly four years before the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas — and the mass killing, devastation and starvation of civilians in Gaza that has followed — would serve to stifle critics of the Israeli government. In many ways, as international students in the U.S. have been arrested and threatened with deportation for expressing pro-Palestinian political views, and schools have cracked down on student protesters for fear of getting federal funding yanked, it has.
Today, the IHRA claims its definition has been adopted by nearly 1,300 entities, including 45 countries, the United States Executive Branch among them, as well as 37 U.S. state governments and 96 U.S. city and county governments.
So what is the definition?
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may (emphasis) be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It might not be limited to that. Is anti-Zionism, antisemitism? IHRA’s website attempts to explain: “Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” That language seems ambiguous too.
The text goes on to cite examples of antisemitism including, “Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.” Does criticizing Israel’s government qualify as this? Or this other IHRA antisemitism bullet point: “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.”
The definition’s language does not read like law, because, according to Aronoff, it was never intended to be law. However, critics say IHRA and supporters of Israel are using it to chill and quash criticism of Israel’s government policies, and most recently, military operations in Gaza and the West Bank here in the U.S.
Aviva Chomsky spelled out what’s happening in an essay at The Nation last week: “Creating legal avenues to suppress what would otherwise be protected political speech about Israel is a major reason that the IHRA and its allies have felt the need to turn their definition into law. And advocates for the legal adoption of that definition claim that it’s necessary because antisemitism is on the rise in this country.”
The proliferation of these laws came within months, if not weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, when over 10,000 Gazans had already been killed, mostly civilians, in IDF operations in the Strip. Protests were ramping up in American streets and especially college campuses as Americans began questioning U.S. military aid to Israel. Government officials, including the FBI, were warning that incidents of antisemitism were already climbing to "historic levels" across the country.
On his November 2023 bill to require the Department of Education “to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism for use in enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said outright, “we have seen a rapid rise in antisemitism on these college campuses, and we need to crack down on it.”
The U.S. House eventually passed a pro-IHRA definition bill, 320-91, in May 2024. The Senate, so far, has failed to do the same.
In the meantime, the crackdown on speech has been in full force, often justified by some variation of IHRA-defined prohibitions on antisemitism.
Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was arrested in March “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism.”
After last year's protests over the war in Gaza, the Trump administration said it expanded on its 2019 order and would take “forceful and unprecedented steps to marshal all Federal resources to combat the explosion of anti-Semitism on our campuses and in our streets since October 7, 2023.”
In late July, The Times of Israel reported that at Columbia University alone “nearly 80 students were suspended or expelled” as the school came under pressure to crack down on alleged antisemitism or lose federal funding. Columbia is by no means an outlier.
When Republican Ohio State Senator Terry Johnson proposed a bill in November — that passed — to define antisemitism under state law to determine whether an individual has committed “ethnic intimidation,” he said that “demonstrations related to pro-Gaza protests on college campuses have been marked by disturbing displayed aggression and intolerance.”
“Many of these protests cross the line into antisemitism by targeting Jewish students and expressing hateful rhetoric,” Johnson added, not issuing any specific examples for the record.
His efforts had critics. “By tying the IHRA definition to legal and administrative decisions, this bill risks confusing legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies or the political ideology of Zionism with antisemitism,” said Ann Ghazy, who joined others at the state capitol ahead of the December 2024 vote that nonetheless overwhelmingly passed Johnson’s bill. “Such conflation undermines valid discussions about human rights and self-determination and threatens to stifle debates necessary for a healthy democracy.”
Kenneth Stern is the director of the Center for the Study of Hate at Bard College who authored the IHRA’s original definition of antisemitism in 2006. Stern said that weaponizing the definition through law, or executive order, "puts pro-Israel Jewish students in a situation where they may be seen as trying to suppress speech rather than answer it.”
Stern, who says there is real antisemitism in America, including on college campuses, nonetheless charges that the definition he helped to craft is being distorted and misused to silence anti-Israel critics, and that could make the situation worse.
Critics contend that merely using this definition to enforce new laws or de facto speech codes could lead to other abuses. This is already happening. As independent journalist Glenn Greenwald noted on X on Sunday: “A Jewish professor of Holocaust Studies may leave Columbia because the texts she always used include the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, who compared Zionists to Nazis and said Zionism is racist: now banned ideas under the IHRA hate speech code Trump forced on universities.”
Greenwald was referring to the Trump administration’s funding cuts to schools that the White House feels are not properly investigating for antisemitism offenses as defined by the IHRA.
As Columbia professor Marianne Hirsch, a prominent genocide scholar, told the Associated Press, “A university that treats criticism of Israel as antisemitic and threatens sanctions for those who disobey is no longer a place of open inquiry. I just don’t see how I can teach about genocide in that environment.”
Hirsch has been using the same curriculum for years but suddenly it’s an offense. It shouldn’t be, nor should speaking against Israel’s government, or any other government, and especially one’s own.
As Aronoff put it, “If you think this isn’t about suppressing political speech, contemplate a parallel. There’s no definition of anti-black racism that has the force of law when evaluating a Title VI case.” She added, “If you were to craft one, would you include opposition to affirmative action? Opposing removal of Confederate statues?”
Good questions, messy and unanswered, and likely unanswerable, because few would even think to go there legally, due to the First Amendment.
Whether or not something is considered “hateful rhetoric" — does waving a Palestinian flag, or calling what is happening in Gaza a genocide qualify? — this display of speech is something most Americans for the last half century understood was protected under the First Amendment, a precedent set by the Supreme Court in 1978 in a case brought by the ACLU in defense of neo-Nazi speech.
The Ohio state senator mentioned above insists that his “legislation should not be construed to diminish or infringe on any right protected by the First Amendment.” This addendum is what most government leaders have said to brush off Constitutional concerns over their antisemitism speech bills. And they are wrong — just because they say it passes Constitutional muster doesn’t make it so.
Courts are already considering whether using the IHRA definition of antisemitism to forge policies and law is unconstitutional.
In October 2024, the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas found in Students for Justice in Palestine v. Abbott that an executive order directing all Texas higher education institutions to use the IHRA definition of antisemitism to create and enforce speech codes likely violates the First Amendment and that affected student groups can proceed with lawsuits against the governor.
There has been much racial and religious upheaval throughout the history of the United States and an often bruised and battered First Amendment has, thankfully, survived it all.
Is this now but a memory? And for what cause — another country’s government?
As Glenn Greenwald posits, “There's no Israel exception to the First Amendment of the US Constitution.”
